Goodbye, Bertie, goodbye
Last week, I had a conversation no one wants to have. A separation. After almost two years of a union that was enriching, life-changing and beautiful, that enabled freedom and pure joy, it had come to a crushing end. Literally.
Bertie and I met at a makeshift car dealership just outside Derry in a place called the Glenshane. He was sleek, sort of stumpy, and silver; not in a foxy, attractive way, but an actual metallic way. Yes, Bertie was a car, and a fantastic second-hand motor that at first glance I believed would be the perfect partner in a long and fruitful relationship. But if there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s that nothing, absolutely nothing, lasts forever.
Bertie and I had some unforgettable times together. Bertie acquired the traditionally male name because to me, the car looked like a Bertie. I know it’s not the done thing to assign a gender to anyone or anything these days, but Bertie was neither a girl nor a boy, but a car, and I saw Bertie as a non-binary motor. Just a car called Bertie.
Over the past two years, Bertie and I travelled all over Ireland and the little motor bore me with the might of a noble steed, with dignity and pride. Let me interject here to say that I am aware it is a car and not a human. This is what humans do. We give human qualities to objects. It’s weird, we’re weird, and maybe it’s an evolutionary trait, although I’m not sure why we would have such a trait.
Bertie and I have seen huge, chaotic waves from the Atlantic Ocean bashing against the Donegal coast. We’ve seen lambs gamboling in the green fields along the main arterial route from Derry to Belfast as Bertie transported me to and from my place of learning and source of stress while I was doing my Masters. It never let me down; unless you count that time I tried to start the car from my sister’s house and Bertie dropped one. The exhaust pipe made an awful, throaty cry as Bertie struggled to breathe and the hollow metal tube fell to the ground, rolling underneath the car. The trust faded somewhat. But I never imagined the end would come so soon.
Bertie has seen me at my happiest. For me, driving is pure joy. It satisfies a longing in me that must be as base an instinct as they come: A whirling state of unbridled freedom, at speeds that the human body isn’t naturally supposed to experience, with millions of years of evolutionary restraint evaporated as the impossibility of the act of flying becomes a reality.
Bertie and I found the meaning of life together. Strong words, I know, but true nonetheless. Bertie would be struggling to keep up with my foot on the accelerator, while I, tapping, nay, banging my hands on the steering wheel, sang at the top of my lungs as we careened through the countryside along empty, country roads.
The conversation last week was with an invisible mechanic on the end of a phone; a cold-hearted menace who takes innocent cars and decides willy-nilly to scrap them for being less than their modern brethren. He used the words “death-trap”. How dare he. We discussed the options; whether Bertie should be revived and the price of the work compared to the price of the car — but how can one put a price on friendship? It was decided that Bertie be ushered into that big scrapheap in the sky; a scrapheap in which we’ll all end up one day.
And there I’ll be reunited with the one who brought me joy. Goodbye, Bertie. Wait for me.